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We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal
archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every
other human being go back to the Intellectual, every [living]
thing having origin and principle There.
If Socrates, Socrates' soul, is external then the Authentic
Socrates- to adapt the term- must be There; that is to say, the
individual soul has an existence in the Supreme as well as in
this world. If there is no such permanent endurance and what was
Socrates may with change of time become another soul and be
Pythagoras or someone else- then the individual Socrates has not
that existence in the Divine.
But if the Soul of the individual contains the Reason-Principles
of all that it traverses, once more all men have their
[archetypic] existence There: and it is our doctrine that every
soul contains all the Reason-Principles that exist in the Kosmos:
since then the Kosmos contains the Reason-Principles not merely
of man, but also of all individual living things, so must the
Soul. Its content of Reason-Principles, then, must be limitless,
unless there be a periodical renovation bounding the
boundlessness by the return of a former series.
But if [in virtue of this periodic return] each archetype may be
reproduced by numerous existents, what need is there that there
be distinct Reason-Principles and archetypes for each existent in
any one period? Might not one [archetypal] man suffice for all,
and similarly a limited number of souls produce a limitless
number of men?
No: one Reason-Principle cannot account for distinct and
differing individuals: one human being does not suffice as the
exemplar for many distinct each from the other not merely in
material constituents but by innumerable variations of ideal
type: this is no question of various pictures or images
reproducing an original Socrates; the beings produced differ so
greatly as to demand distinct Reason-Principles. The entire
soul-period conveys with it all the requisite Reason-Principles,
and so too the same existents appear once more under their
action.
There is no need to baulk at this limitlessness in the
Intellectual; it is an infinitude having nothing to do with
number or part; what we may think of it as its outgoing is no
other than its characteristic Act.
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